PARIS – Otisfield Elementary School has the highest average class size of any grammar school in SAD 17, but the spike is temporary, Superintendent Mark Eastman said.

Otisfield has 20.4 students per class. The lowest school-average class size is at the Hebron Station School, at 13 students per class.

“Otisfield has not come up on our radar screen so far,” in terms of exceeding the district’s standards for teacher-pupil ratios, Eastman said. “Generally, what we see in the smaller schools is cycles, some bubbles that come up” and normalize as the students move up in grade level.

Average class sizes for the other elementary schools in the district are 14.2 at Harrison, 14.3 at Fox in Paris, 16 at Oxford, 16.5 at West Paris, 16.6 at Madison Avenue in Oxford, 17.4 at Rowe at Norway, and 17.8 at Waterford.

In prior years, Otisfield, like the other smaller elementary schools of Waterford, West Paris and Hebron, has traditionally had only one class each in kindergarten through sixth grade.

But kindergarten enrollments this fall were so high that the district had to add another kindergarten class. “It must have been the Ice Storm of 98,” Eastman said.

The 24-student sixth grade class at Otisfield contributed to the spike in average class size, Eastman said.

“In grades four, five and six, we like to keep the numbers between 20 and 25 students,” he said. At grades one, two and three, the preferred maximum class size is 18 students, and in kindergarten, 15 students.